Brazil's Indigenous People Turn To EU To Save Their Savanna

An EU law banning deforestation-derived products comes into effect at the end of 2024, but for Brazilian Indigenous people it contains an unbearable loophole: the Cerrado, Brazil's vast wooded savanna, is excluded from its scope

Brussels, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Mar, 2024) An EU law banning deforestation-derived products comes into effect at the end of 2024, but for Brazilian Indigenous people it contains an unbearable loophole: the Cerrado, Brazil's vast wooded savanna, is excluded from its scope.

An Indigenous delegation taking up the issue during a visit to Brussels said that the oversight -- for a region that supplies Europe with soy -- is "a question of survival" for them.

"The Cerrado is my home," declared Eliane Xunakalo, her feathered headdress waving in Belgium's spring weather.

The president of the Federation of Indigenous Peoples of Mato Grosso, one of the big Brazilian states across which the savanna extends, she visited Brussels last week with other activists to press the European Union to "improve" its anti-deforestation law.

Adopted last year, the legislation requires importers to show their products come from "deforestation-free supply chains" and not from land deforested after 2020.

Its scope covers palm oil, beef, soy, coffee, cocoa, timber and rubber as well as derived products such as furniture and chocolate. It comes into force at the end of December this year.

However the definition of "forest" in the text does not extend to wooded ecosystems such as the Cerrado, which extends through central Brazil and into neighbouring Paraguay and Bolivia.

Much of the soy imported into Europe comes from that zone, and deforestation within it jumped 43 percent last year.